Rwanda looks to Israel as model of how to persevere after genocide

As a country where genocide was committed just over two decades ago, Rwanda looks to Israel as a model of how to build a modern country out of the ashes of racial extermination, Rwanda’s Ambassador Joseph Rutabana told The Jerusalem Post.

Rutabana’s comment in an interview in his Herzliya Pituah office on Wednesday comes on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to four east African countries at the beginning of July: Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

Rwanda is on the list, according to one Israeli diplomatic source, because it is arguably Israel’s closest friend on the continent.